In a machine-facilitated process of filling a container with liquid, a cap gripper may be employed by a filling machine to remove a cap from the container so that the container may be filled with a liquid. Once the container has been filled with the liquid, the cap gripper may be employed by the filling machine to place the cap back onto the container in order to seal the liquid within the container.
While certain cap grippers have been proposed (see, e.g., those described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,283,901 to Schieser et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,363,203 to Marshall et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,481,753 to Rutter et al., U.S. Pat. No. 6,889,482 to Edwards et al., and EP 0 252 345 to Paul Kunz, the respective entireties of each being incorporated herein by reference), these cap grippers do not appear to offer one or more of the advantages provided by the cap grippers described below.